45 Years of Women Make Movies

Black Women’s Filmmaking in the 1970s

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A shorts program of rarely screened prints by four key directors
shows women’s central role in the black filmmaking renaissance of the 1970s and
suggests how many stories and talents are still missing: in a recent study of
1,000 popular films, only three were directed by black women.

Diary of an African Nun

Dir. Julie Dash, US, 1977, 16mm,
b/w, 13 min.

In this adaptation of a short story by Alice Walker, a nun in Uganda
is consumed by fear and doubt about her decision to take the solemn vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience. Her anguish intensifies as she lies on a hard bed in
the convent listening to the beckoning drums of her village. An early short by
Julie Dash, featuring Barbara O. who would later play Yellow Mary in Daughters of the Dust.

A fight between an African American and a white schoolgirl
in Boston is explored in all its complexity in this fact-based drama from Jackie Shearer, who worked at Women Make Movies in its early
days and served as one of the producers of the historic PBS Eyes
on the Prize.

From Alile Sharon Larkin (A
Different Image), part of the LA Rebellion, comes a child’s perspective on
wealth and social inequity. Tovi is torn
between two surrogate mothers: one comfortably bourgeois, the other
nationalist.

An offbeat, wryly humorous look at the dilemma of a
would-be suicide unable to find the right outfit to die in, examines the
personal habits, socialization, and complexities of life that keep us going. When
the film recently screened at BAM, Richard Brody wrote in The New Yorker: “very simply, one of the best short films that I’ve ever seen.”

A 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers'
exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life,
hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to stereotypes of women of color who
earn their living as domestic workers.